Legacy Meets Tech: Odlum Brown Tackles Wealth Onboarding With Mako

VANCOUVER, BC – November 03, 2026 — In the rapidly shifting 2026 investment landscape, market momentum isn't just driven by asset allocation; it is increasingly dictated by operational alpha. For an independent investment firm with over a century of history, the challenge of digital transformation is often a delicate balancing act. The goal is to modernize legacy infrastructure to capture next-generation capital without eroding the high-touch, personalized service that built the firm's reputation in the first place. Odlum Brown, a stalwart of the Canadian wealth management sector, is navigating this exact transition through a newly announced partnership with Montreal-based wealthtech provider Mako Financial Technologies. The collaboration centers on a custom digital client onboarding solution that directly targets one of the industry's most notorious administrative bottlenecks, offering a masterclass in the "why behind the buy" for enterprise technology.

Bridging Heritage and Modernity

Odlum Brown has spent over 100 years cultivating deep, often multi-generational client relationships across Canada. As a 100% employee-owned entity offering discretionary portfolio management, financial planning, and tax strategy, its operational ethos has always leaned heavily on bespoke client care. However, the modern wealth management landscape—increasingly defined by agile fintech competitors and demanding digital-native investors—requires more than just a firm handshake and a paper form.

Recognizing this shift, the British Columbia-headquartered firm has positioned the Mako deployment as a foundational pillar of its broader digital transformation strategy. The objective is clear: automate the tedious, manual elements of account creation to free up human capital for revenue-generating advisory work.

"Opening an account is one of the earliest experiences a client has with our firm, and it should be as straightforward and welcoming as possible," said Sam Jiwani, Chief Information Officer, Vice President, Director at Odlum Brown. "Mako worked with us to understand how we could create a more fluid workflow from end to end, for both our clients and those teams supporting them, while integrating with our existing systems. The result is a seamless experience for our clients and a process that gives our advisors and client service teams the information they need at each stage."

The result is a platform that allows for collaborative workflows. Depending on client preference, the application process can be driven entirely by the advisory team or shared collaboratively with the client, ensuring the technology adapts to the relationship rather than forcing the relationship to adapt to the technology.

Cracking the Core: The Dataphile Dilemma

To appreciate the significance of this deployment, one must understand the technical friction that plagues traditional wealth management back offices. For decades, the industry standard has involved disparate front-end data collection methods that ultimately require manual re-keying into legacy books of record.

Odlum Brown utilizes Broadridge Dataphile as its core system to fulfill trading, clearing, and settlement operations. Connecting a modern cloud-based onboarding interface to this entrenched architecture is widely considered one of wealthtech's hardest problems. Mako Financial Technologies achieved this through a native integration that enables true straight-through processing (STP).

Instead of generating a PDF that a back-office employee must manually transcribe, Mako's platform securely gathers client data, performs necessary validations, and submits the approved account information directly into the Dataphile system. This direct pipeline drastically reduces "Not In Good Order" (NIGO) submissions—applications delayed due to missing signatures, incomplete fields, or transcription errors.

"Onboarding should make it easier for firms to serve their clients, without creating more work behind the scenes," noted Raphael Bouskila, Founder and CEO of Mako Financial Technologies. "Working closely with Odlum Brown, we built a solution around the way their business operates. The native book of record integration is central to that work, connecting onboarding with their client service operating systems and giving their teams a more efficient foundation to build on."

Industry analysts frequently point out that while many wealthtech platforms offer sleek user interfaces, they often fail to solve the underlying data continuity problem. By focusing heavily on native integration, the Montreal-based fintech is addressing the root cause of operational drag, allowing the independent firm to compress account opening timelines from weeks to mere days.

The Household Imperative and Regulatory Rigor

Beyond the technical plumbing, the practical application of the new system introduces several features designed specifically to accelerate advisor efficiency. Chief among these is the ability to handle complex household onboarding.

In traditional environments, opening a joint account, a corporate account, and individual retirement accounts for a single family requires redundant paperwork and repetitive identity verification. The new platform introduces simultaneous multi-account opening capabilities, allowing advisors to launch multiple applications within the same household at once.

Peter Pacholko, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer at Odlum Brown, identified this as a critical win for the firm's operational flow. "Early on in the planning phases of this client onboarding project we identified three features within the Mako platform that would vastly improve the client experience and decrease the time it takes to open accounts," Pacholko stated. He highlighted collaboration as the first feature, noting that the flexibility provides options for clients to participate or for advisors to fully populate data. "The second feature was the dynamic workflows in the application, which limit the required data collection or authorizations based on the questions asked at the beginning of the process. And finally, the third feature was the ability to open multiple applications within the same household simultaneously. Another fantastic time saver!"

This efficiency does not come at the expense of compliance. In fact, digitized workflows are becoming a regulatory necessity. Canadian wealth managers operate under strict Know Your Client (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) mandates governed by the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (PCMLTFA). With incoming regulations mandating government-issued photo ID for account openings by December 2025, robust digital identity verification is non-negotiable.

The integrated platform addresses these mandates through automated AML and identity verification lookups, native e-signatures secured with AATL CA certificates, and bank-grade data encryption. Because the system utilizes dynamic data validation, it automatically adjusts the required fields and authorizations based on the specific risk profile and account type being opened, ensuring compliance checks are built directly into the user journey rather than treated as an afterthought.

Furthermore, the system's role-based permissions provide a clear, immutable digital audit trail. Administrators can restrict workflow visibility based on employee roles, satisfying regulatory demands for data privacy and operational oversight. This level of automated compliance reporting is a massive leap forward for brokerages looking to scale their operations without proportionally scaling their compliance headcount.

A Blueprint for Independent Brokerages

The integration between the century-old investment firm and the modern wealthtech provider is indicative of a broader modernization trend sweeping the Canadian financial sector. Independent broker-dealers are increasingly realizing that they do not need to build proprietary software from scratch to compete with the massive technology budgets of national bank-owned dealers. Instead, strategic alliances with specialized firms offer a more agile path forward.

Industry consultants note that true digital transformation requires connecting CRM, onboarding, portfolio management, and reporting systems to create a unified ecosystem. While competitors in the wealthtech space, such as d1g1t and Croesus, offer broad portfolio management and advanced analytics capabilities, the specific focus on solving the onboarding data-entry bottleneck sets this deployment apart. It highlights a shift in priority from merely presenting data beautifully to fundamentally fixing how that data enters the enterprise architecture in the first place.

By leveraging specialized third-party providers capable of deep, native API integrations, regional firms can assemble a best-of-breed technology stack. This open wealth approach allows them to maintain their independence and distinct corporate culture while delivering a digital client experience that rivals or exceeds that of larger institutions.

As the partnership matures, both organizations have indicated plans to explore further workflow simplifications to support evolving operational needs. For investors and market watchers analyzing the viability of independent brokerages in 2026, this deployment serves as a critical indicator of corporate health. It demonstrates that with the right technological alignment, even the most deeply entrenched legacy systems can be transformed into engines of modern efficiency, proving that the firms best positioned for future growth are those willing to relentlessly optimize the mechanics of their own success.